By LOU FRENZEL, Contributing Editor

LEDs Brighten the Future

of Automotive Lighting
Sponsored by Texas Instruments: The latest in LED drivers can help overcome
complexity challenges brought on by advances in automotive lighting design.

F
or years now, LED technology has been gradually
finding its way into automobiles. LEDs have become
brighter, more efficient, and less expensive. Automo-
tive lighting has made driving safer, but it’s introduced
some sophisticated and complex electronic changes that create
challenges for designers. Let’s take a look at automotive light-
ing basics and the latest developments impacting design.
Why Use LEDs in Automotive Applications?
There are two major rationales. First, LEDs are more effi-
cient than the older incandescent bulbs. They consume less
power for the same or greater illumination intensity. Evalua-
tions indicate that LEDs are six times more efficient than the
incandescent bulbs they replace.
Second, LEDs have a longer service life than an incandes-
cent bulb. Headlights, tail lights, and oth-
ers burn out after 1,200 or more hours of
operation. And replacement is usually
expensive. The average LED has a life-
time of 42 times that of an incandescent.
12 V
With a service life of over 50,000 hours, MCU
you may never have to replace a light
source in your vehicle. (a)
stop lights, backup lights, and a license-plate light. And there
may be other decorative or style lighting depending on the
manufacturer. In any case, with a full complement of front
and rear LED lights, power consumption can be high. But that
turns out to be less power than what’s consumed by older in-
candescent lights.
Automotive lights are individual LEDs grouped together to
form a matrix or cluster. Most automotive LEDs are white, but
red and amber are also available in different sizes and light
intensities. Light guides, lenses, and diffusers are used to make
the light appear as though it comes from a single source, elim-
inating the individual dot look of the early LED automotive
light fixtures.
Special drivers are needed to operate the LEDs. One driver
IC can typically handle a cluster of multiple LEDs. The driv-
To
LEDs
LED strings

Automotive Lighting ABCs

You can divide automotive lighting
applications into three categories: exte-
rior front, exterior rear, and interior. This
article will focus on exterior lighting. To
12 V LEDs
Front exterior lights include headlights,
high and low beams, daytime running
lights (DRLs), fog lights, and turn sig- (b)
nals. Some vehicles also feature adaptive
CAN link
headlight lighting that enables better il-
lumination around curves while driving The older LED driver circuits were operated by the MCU in the body control module (a). With
in low-light conditions. the newer configurations, the body control module sends commands to the electronic control
Rear lighting consists of tail lights, unit (b). The ECU contains the drivers that operate the LEDs.

☞ LEARN MORE @ electronicdesign.com | 1

ers are current sources with appropriate drive and interface
circuits. The typical arrangement is a series string of LEDs,
so that all LEDs receive the same current. This is essential to
ensure the uniform color and brightness of the lights.
LED drivers are essentially dc-dc converters/regulators.
They operate from the car’s 12-V system and provide either a
lower or higher dc output as required. Buck and boost types
are common as are buck-boost, SEPIC, and Cuk. The driv-
ers connect to a master control MCU, and a CAN interface
network is provided to route the control signals around the
vehicle as needed.
Front and Rear Lighting
Front lighting is generally fixed and similar on all ve-
hicles—headlights, DRLs, and turn signals are all mandated
and standardized. Special drivers are required, of course. The
newest innovations include dimming and adaptive front light-
ing (AFL). Dimming, used to prevent blinding oncoming ve-
hicles, is accomplished with pulse-width modulation (PWM).
AFL consists of two additional lights, generally to the left
and right of the headlights. These lights provide extra side il-
lumination for making turns safely at night. As the steering
wheel begins its turn to the right or left, the AFL units turn
on and move to direct the light to the side. Stepper motors
are commonly used for this purpose. Up and down movement
can adjust the lights so as not to interfere with oncoming driv-
er vision.
The story is different with rear lighting. While tail lights,
stop lights, and backup lights are required, the rear of the ve-
hicle has become an open territory that manufacturers can ex-
plore with new designs. Vehicle makers like to create a unique
look or symbol that designates a particular make or model.
Some vehicles may sport a signature look implemented with
a creative light presentation or operation. A current trend is
lighting that extends across the entire rear of the vehicle.
Rear lighting is getting more interesting as manufactur-
ers want pixel-level control where a pixel is one LED, which
would enable a variety of tail-light animations. Newly avail-
able drivers provide for this capability. Three trends are in-
fluencing rear-lighting systems: complex animation, evolving
lamp styles, and diagnostics. Consider the following links to
learn more.
The Auto Lighting System
Equipment that makes up the older traditional lighting sys-
tems of vehicles consists of the body control module (BCM)
and the LED drivers (see the figure, a). The BCM is a block of
electronics with a microcontroller (MCU) base that operates
all or most of the various electrical and electronic systems as-
sociated with the body of the vehicle, such as doors, windows,
mirrors, seats, and lighting. The BCM operates the individual
light drivers.
☞ LEARN MORE @ electronicdesign.com |
The modern version consists of the BCM and a separate
electronic control unit (ECU). The ECU contains the LED
drivers (see the figure, b). The MCU in the BCM operates the
drivers via the MCU in the ECU. A controller-area-network
(CAN) bus provides a communications link between the
BCM and ECU.
Design Challenges
Engineers designing automotive lighting systems face some
daunting challenges. Main issues affecting the design of the
drivers and their packaging include:
• Operating from the 12-V auto battery power bus, which
can have a voltage on it from a low of about 6 V during start-
stop restarts, or as high 16 V on a bus during charging by the
alternator. Other problems are transients or pulses that can
peak at 36 V during a load dump.
• Operating over a huge temperature range, typically span-
ning from −40 to + 85°C.
• Providing fault diagnosis, which is highly desirable given
the complexity of the lighting systems these days.
• Meeting EMI/EMC rules. LED drivers are switch-mode
power supplies that tend to generate noise. It’s essential that
autos don’t interfere with other vehicles or other electronic
equipment nearby. Lighting systems are usually tested by
the standards organization Comite’ International Special des
Perturbations Radio’electriques (CISPR) 25 and according to
noise-immunity standards such as ISO 11452-5.
To help with these challenges, Texas Instruments offers a
line of LED drivers and support circuits that can help with
your design.
LED Driver Examples
Typical of the latest generation of LED drivers is Texas In-
struments’ TPC929120-Q1. It operates from a supply voltage
in the 4.5- to 40-V range over a temperature range of −40 to
+ 125°C. The AEC-Q100-qualified driver meets the needs of
trends regarding pixel-level control and diagnostics. Key fea-
tures are 12 independent output channels with 40-V high-side
drivers, 8-bit output-current selection, and 12-bit PWM duty-
cycle selection. All 12 channels can be individually dimmed
via PWM.
A desirable new feature is the built-in diagnostics and pro-
tection. The IC can detect open or shorted LEDs amongst
others, and it includes overvoltage and overtemperature pro-
tection. The internal FlexWire serial data interface provides
communications over standard CAN physical-layer wiring
and allows for long-distance runs of cable in the vehicle with-
out causing interference.
Other driver ICs are also available for advancing headlight
needs. Headlights are often implemented via a dual-stage pow-
er supply for high-power LEDs. The first stage can be accom-
plished with the TPS92682-Q1 LED Driver. It’s highly con-
2
figurable and can be utilized as a constant-current buck boost/
boost/SEPIC LED driver for static headlights, or as a constant-
voltage boost regulator for adaptive systems. The second stage
can be powered with the TPS92520-Q1 monolithic buck LED
driver, which dims via analog or PWM control. It operates at
up to a 2.2-MHz switching frequency, and with an exposed
top side pad on the package, it resolves many of the thermal
challenges that may come with headlight design. Communi-
cations for both devices comes via SPI capability.
Moreover, the TPS9266x-Q1 family of LED matrix man-
agers enables fully dynamic adaptive-lighting solutions by
providing individual pixel-level LED control. The matrix
managers include four sub-strings of three series-connected
integrated switches for bypassing individual LEDs. Other
switching arrays enable a variety of operations for pixel con-
trol.

Available Reference Design

A good starting point for a static or adaptive headlight
design is TI’s reference design. TIDA-050030. This 120-W
matrix-compatible headlight electronic-control-unit (ECU)
reference design incorporates a heat-sink metal enclosure and
CISPR 25 Class 5 conducted test data, letting you design a
thermally efficient headlight ECU. The reference design uses
both the TPS9282-Q1 and TPS92520-Q1 LED drivers, and is
useful for driving pixel-controlled LED loads.
The article “How to flexibly configure an LED driver for au-
tomotive headlights” is an excellent primer on ECU configura-
tion and uses the TPS92682-Q1 LED driver as a case study.
With constant-current and constant-voltage modes, this high-
ly flexible solution addresses the headlight challenges of today
and tomorrow.

Caption

☞ LEARN MORE @ electronicdesign.com | 3